Jonathan Turley has an excellent editorial in the L.A. Times about the Obama Administration’s repeated re-writes of Obamacare by executive fiat. As Turley observes, this is part of the Administration’s pattern of Legislation By Press Release—and even if you are a Democrat or otherwise support Pres. Obama’s policy goals, you should be concerned about the precedent that these rewrites of the law are setting, which might be exploited by the next person to occupy the Oval Office. “In our system, it is often more important how we do something than what we do. Priorities and policies and presidents change. Democrats will rue the day of their acquiescence to this shift of power when a future president negates an environmental law, or an anti-discrimination law, or tax laws.”
But there’s an important additional point Turley doesn’t make. As we’ve noted on this blog, you must keep in mind that the President is not actually changing the law when he issues these dictates; he’s simply saying his deputies will decline to enforce the law for a certain period of time. And the problem with that is, it allows those in charge to demand certain concessions in exchange for these executive orders. “If you give me X,” the President can say, “I will order my deputies not to enforce the law against you.” If the President can grant waivers, he can demand things in exchange for those waivers—as, in fact, President Obama did when granting “waivers” of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Read the rest at PLF Liberty Blog.
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